1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to laminated fabric materials, especially for use as a lining in clothing to provide insulation for the wearer and to protect against moisture build up against the skin of the wearer.
This invention also relates to the method of manufacturing a laminated fabric material, especially for use as a lining in clothing.
2. Description of Prior Art
Linings are often put in apparel for purposes of comfort, durability, and insulation. This is especially true in apparel that is used in colder temperature areas. The linings provide for thermal insulation and are often used to capture and form various insulating materials, such as down or other loose materials that provide air pockets as an insulator.
The linings also are often non-porous, to provide a wind screen to assist in the capture of body heat of the wearer of the garment. However, because these linings are non-porous, moisture from perspiration, for instance, collects on the surface and remains in contact with the body of the wearer.
Linings often prove difficult, either to manufacture or to properly install in the garment, or once installed to provide the durability and insulating properties necessary. For example, plush linings--the types used in down jackets or such--require an extensive amount of individual sewing in order to form pockets in which the light insulating material is captured. This material must be packed and blended in a uniform manner, often by hand, and then a separate intricate sewing procedure carried out to form the appropriate containers or pockets. Once the garment is in use, it is notorious that the individual threads, which form the design to form the various pockets, start unraveling and the insulating material then becomes free to travel within the lining of the jacket, and the lining loses much of its effectiveness. Additionally, such linings are bulky and often uncomfortable for the wearer.
The non-porous windscreen type of linings also have proved to be less than satisfactory since they usually do not absorb moisture. Therefore, if the wearer of the garment perspires, the perspiration stays on the inside of the jacket, in contact with the skin of the wearer, making him feel uncomfortable.
Attempts to use reflective materials in the lining in order to reflect back the body heat to assist in the thermoinsulation procedures have often been unsuccessful. The reflective material must be flexible enough to provide comfort, but often thin layers of reflective metals tend to crack or break so as to scratch or irritate the wearer. Also, they are subject to corrosion from the normal prespiration of the wearer.
With respect to the manufacturing of these lining materials, as mentioned above, they often require an inordinate amount of hand work in their assembly and manufacture, which leaves the manufacturing process susceptible to wide variations in the properties of the finished product and its quality control. Additionally, the actual fabrication process often requires handling large quantities of loose bulk material which is difficult to effectively manipulate, and which can produce health hazards because of excessive amounts of dust generated from such material.
More specifically, there are numerous prior art references which describe insulating fabric laminates, see for example, the following U.S. Pat. Nos.
3,222,243 to Gaston et al; PA0 3,461,026 to Schick; PA0 4,062,993 to Seward; PA0 4,170,676 to Thomas; PA0 4,315,048 to Beghelli et al; PA0 4,395,455 to Frankosky; PA0 4,420,521 to Carr; PA0 4,433,019 to Chumbley; and PA0 4,446,189 to Romanek.
None of these references teach or suggest the insulating fabric of this invention, the combined advantages obtained therefrom, and the unique process of making this fabric.
The most relevant reference is Seward. Seward teaches the manufacture of carpeting using a laminate formed of a heavy base fabric with a heavy foil overlay with a thick pile of heavy fiber batting placed on top of the foil and then some of the batting is needle punched through the layers to provide a continuous layer of fibers on the underside of the base fabric. This continuous layer of fiber bat on the underside of the fabric base is used for adhering the laminate to a latex base after the laminate has been needle punched or power tufted to provide the relatively thick and heavy rug nap, and to anchor the rug nap into the latex. The upper layer of densified non-woven bat is used to fill in the spaces between the fibers forming the rug tufts and is the receptacle for dye in order to aesthetically disguise the spaces between the rug tufts. The metallic foil is used primarily during the manufacturing process or pallet tufting of the carpet fibers to act as a heat sink to dissipate the frictional heat of the tuft fibers being forced through the laminate which could either ignite or melt the materials forming the laminate.
The metallic foil serves absolutely no function of insulation for the finished product as is the case in the present invention. Additionally, as pointed out above, the metallic layer is completely buried and has no relationship with the ambient environment of the material, i.e., it is non-reflective and covered.